Data science is still white hot, but nothing lasts forever

Every day tech industry execs bemoan the lack of data scientists—the people who theoretically know how to look at the data your company generates, and delve into it to derive the all-important insights we keep hearing about.

And on Thursday, the hype continued. At a Big Data panel hosted by Silicon Valley Bank and Hack/reduce in Boston, nearly 100% percent of the speakers talked about the dearth of qualified data scientists and the impact that is having on business. Several actually said the time to hire a data scientist was: “yesterday.”

What do you expect? Two years ago, The Harvard Business Review, apparently an arbiter of such things, dubbed data scientist “the sexiest job of the 21st century.”

So, if you can’t go back in time to hire a data scientist, sooner is still better than later, said Michael Schmidt, CEO of Nutonian, a Cambridge, Mass. data analytics…